The jury has retired to consider their verdict in the inquest of a student who escaped a mental health unit and was brutally killed.

Eastbourne student Janet Müller, 21, was burned in the boot of a car by Christopher Jeffrey-Shaw after leaving Mill View hospital in Hove where she had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She had escaped by walking out of the front door of the hospital earlier on the same day March 12, 2015.

The jury has heard six days of evidence about the circumstances in which Janet had been detained and how she came to escape from the hospital.

West Sussex senior coroner Penelope Schofield directed the jury that they would have to find she was unlawfully killed, but added that they should give a narrative conclusion setting out the circumstances that led Janet to her death. 

She told them to consider; "Was Janet suffering from an undiagnosed psychiatric illness?

"Was she at risk of absconding? 

"Were staff aware? 

"Were adequate risk assessments carried out in relation to Janet's risk of going absent without leave? 

"Was information relevant to Janet's risk properly recorded?

"Were the risks of absconding adequately managed in light of the information available to staff? 

"Did sussex partnership mental health trust act adequately to the risk of patients absconding over the garden wall? 

"Did staffing levels on the night on March 12 impact on the risk of absconding? 

"Did staff act in accordance with the trust's AWOL policy. "

The six men and three women in the jury were told they could take as long as they needed to reach their conclusions.

The inquest continues. 

Background

Berlin-born Janet came the UK to study international business management in Eastbourne in September 2012.

Her twin sister Selina began studying in Kent, where Janet met her girlfriend Helen Sutton.

Janet had been smoking skunk cannabis heavily before starting to suffer strange behaviour and psychotic episodes. She was first taken to Mill View hospital in Hove in March after being found naked at Eastbourne railway station. She was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, but escaped twice on March 12.

Christopher Jeffrey-Shaw set fire to a hired Volkswagen Jetta near Ifield Golf Club with Janet in the boot the following day. Last year he was found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for 17 years.

Selina told the jury had seen patients openly smoking cannabis within the hospital garden, from which her twin later escaped.

Janet’s mother Ramona Müller said she did not feel the hospital had kept her up to date about Janet’s treatment.

She told the jury: “They always said she was fine.”

“I just thought she was a little bit ill.”

Nursing staff told the inquest they knew the risks of patients escaping through the hospital’s front door and by scaling the wall of the garden in Caburn ward. But they said Janet was not stopped from going into the garden when she was return to the ward after her first escape attempt on March 12.

After being found acting strangely by a farmer at Devil’s Dyke– hitting herself and saying she needed to hurt someone - nurses decided not to increase how often staff checked on her.

Only one qualified nurse was on duty when Janet escaped from Caburn for the second time on March 12, 2015, Naomi O’Mahony.

Ms O’Mahony said Janet had been distressed at about 9pm – but at the time she was busy dispensing patients’ night time medication so only briefly saw her to calm her down She said: “As the nurse in charge you don’t always have time to see everyone all the time.

“At the time I was doing the medication round and due to the demands on the ward wasn’t able to spend as much time with her as I would have liked.”

A police inquiry into the handling of the case found Janet was classed as a “medium risk” missing person on the night she was killed.

Officers recorded that they had considered her “high risk” but had kept her risk level down because staff at Mill View hospital in Hove “were not concerned.”